These entries bear evidence of this horrible butchery; but the Dorcestrians seem to have been accustomed to sights of this kind, as there had been horrible persecutions of the Roman Catholics there in the time of Queen Elizabeth—sequel perhaps to those of the Protestants in the time of Queen Mary—one man named Pritchard was hanged, drawn, and quartered in 1583, and in 1584 four others were executed.
Dorchester, like other places, could boast of local celebrities. Among these was John White, who in 1606 was appointed rector of Dorchester and held that office until the day of his death in 1648. He was the son of one of the early Puritans, and was himself a famous Puritan divine. At the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in 1643 he was said to have prayed before the House of Commons in St. Margaret's for an hour and a half, in the hope that they might be induced to subscribe to the "Covenant" to resist the encroachments of Charles I on religious liberty.
He was a pioneer in the New England movement, and was virtually the founder of Massachusetts, in America. From the first he took a most active part in encouraging emigration and in creating what at that time was known as New England, and he was also the founder of the New England Company. It was in 1620 that the good ship Mayflower arrived at Plymouth with Robinson's first batch of pilgrims from Holland on their way across the Atlantic. It is not certain that White crossed the ocean himself; but his was the master-mind that organised and directed the expeditions to that far-distant land, and he was ably seconded by Bishop Lake, his friend and brother Wykehamist.
JOHN ENDICOTT, FIRST GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS.
He also influenced John Endicott, "a man well known to divers persons of note" and a native of Dorchester, where he was born in 1588, to take an active part in developing the new Colonies, and mainly through the influence of White a patent was obtained from the Council on March 19th, 1628, by which the Crown "bargained and sold unto some Knights and Gentlemen about Dorchester, whose names included that of John Endicott, that part of New England lying between the Merrimac River and the Charles River on Massachusetts Bay."
At the time this "bargain" was made very little was known about America, which was looked upon as a kind of desert or wilderness, nor had the Council any idea of the extent of territory lying between the two rivers. This ultimately became of immense value, as it included the site on which the great town of Boston, U.S.A., now stands—a town that was founded by pilgrims from Boston in Lincolnshire with whom John White was in close contact.
John Endicott sailed from Weymouth in the ship Abigail, Henry Gauder, Master, with full powers to act for the Company. The new Dorchester was founded, and soon afterwards four "prudent and honest men" went out from it and founded Salem. John White procured a patent and royal charter for them also, which was sealed on March 4th, 1629. It seemed the irony of fate that on the same day 147 years afterwards Washington should open fire upon Boston from the Dorchester heights in the American War of Independence.
A second Dorchester was founded in America, probably by settlers from the second Dorchester in England—a large village near which we had passed as we walked through Oxfordshire, where in the distance could be seen a remarkable hill known as Dorchester Clump. Although it had been a Roman town, the city where afterwards St. Birinus, the Apostle of Wessex, set up his episcopal throne from 634 to 707, the head of the See of Wessex, it was now only a village with one long street, and could not compare with its much larger neighbour in Dorset. Its large ancient church, with a fine Jesse window, gave the idea of belonging to a place once of much greater size. The "hands across the sea" between the two Dorchesters have never been separated, but the pilgrims now come in the opposite direction, thousands of Americans visiting Dorchester and its antiquities; we heard afterwards that the American Dorset had been presented with one of the tessellated pavements dug up from a Roman villa in what we might call "Dorchester, Senior," in England, and that a memorial had been put up in the porch of Dorchester Church inscribed as follows:
In this Porch lies the body of the Rev. John White, M.A., of New College, Oxford. He was born at Christmas 1575. For about forty years he was Rector of this Parish, and also of Holy Trinity, Dorchester. He died here July 21st, 1648. A man of great godliness, good scholarship, and wonderful ability. He had a very strong sway in this town. He greatly forwarded the migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where his name lives in unfading remembrance.